Thursday, July 19, 2012

Baked Doughnuts

For many years during my childhood, baking always meant a nice little home made chocolate cake. Ma had a standard fail-proof chocolate cake recipe that always worked well... I remember her making it in a gas-top oven and we filled sand in a plate at the bottom of the oven. Slowly the electric oven replaced it and we perhaps experimented with some variations, but almost always stuck to cake when it came to baking.

Pizza bases, bread, cupcakes were always something we bought out, I don't think we ever felt the need to bother making it ourselves, when it was always so easily available off the shelf...All this until I started reading food blogs and eventually started this one...Okay, I don't bake that much, but I definitely attempt baking a whole lot more than cakes now.

Doughnuts were something I first had at Hot Breads, the first cool looking bakery that opened up many years back in Bangalore...Chocolate coated doughnuts that looked absolutely delicious ! That was our special treat when Ma and me went shopping on Commercial street...

I was super excited when I tried baking these at home, didn't want fried ones, so used Aparna's recipe for the doughnuts, but baked them instead

I had attempted making these a couple of months back, and had a problem with the size of the doughnuts. It took forever, trying to bake these in my small oven.
This time around, it turned out much better. I bought this mini doughnut cutter when I was in Bangalore last time and the little doughnuts shaped up really well

I did have a some apprehensions about how the baked ones would taste, but I really needn't have worried. They were really soft and delicious. I made two topping for these doughnuts, I glazed the doughnuts with some warm butter and then pressed it down on a mix of cinnamon, vanilla sugar and dessicated coconut.

I did a chocolate topping with some sprinkles for the kids. I was a bit lazy and did not want to make the chocolate glaze, when I had this box of chocolate icing from my lamingtons. The chocolate was dripping off the sides, not that the kids complained, but just that it doesn't look so neat

For the chocolate topping, I used the chocolate icing remaining from the lamingtons, which was not such a great idea. Check here for Aparna's beautiful chocolate glaze

What you do with it -

Warm the milk in a pan, keep two tablespoons of milk aside and add the butter to the rest and allow it to melt.
Sprinkle the yeast over the milk and then add it to the milk-butter mixture
In a large bowl, beat the egg and add it along with the sugar and salt to the milk-butter mixture
Add about 2.5 cups of the flour to this and mix well using a spatula, till the flour is incorporated
Add 2 more cups of flour and mix well. If the dough is too sticky, add little more flour and mix well. I used about 4.5 cups of flour for the dough.
Dust your palms with flour, and shape the dough into a ball. Keep in a greased bowl and allow it to rise for about 1 1/2 hours.Place the risen dough in the fridge for another hour or so till it is almost double in volume.
Dust your work surface with flour and place about quarter of the dough on it. Roll it out using a rolling pin and till it is about 1/2" thick. Use the cutter and cut out as many as you can from that dough. Repeat with the remaining dough
Pre heat the oven to 190 C. Place the doughnuts on a lightly greased butter paper and bake for 10-12 mins.
Allow to cool and then glaze them
Mix the dessicated coconut, cinnamon powder and vanilla sugar well and spread in a plate
Brush the doughnuts with some melted butter and then press it on the coconut-cinnamon-sugar topping
Goes great with some hot coffee or tea.

cant believe those are baked. it fluffed up so nicely. bookmarked. btw love the stream lined look of your page. the header looks great with that Kerala spice box which I wanted to buy on our visit there.btw guess you forgot to mention about the baking time of the doughnuts.

These baked donuts look delicious! I didn't know you could bake them without that special pan, so I haven't tried them! Now that I know you can do it, and so beautifully, too, I am definitely going to try them! :) They look so soft and delicious!

Hi, I read that you got your donut cutters from B'lore. I am new to the city and need to know where I get my baking wares from .Please can you guide me?Also, are there donuts also baked in your microwave on the convection mode?

@nandusabkabandhu - These were baked in the convection mode of my microwave oven. There is this place called General Food Additives in Sheshadripuram, which is where I buy my stuff from. Their numbers are - 23367878, 23360517. There are other places - refer this post on Suma's blog - http://sumarowjee.blogspot.in/2010/01/whipping-cream.html, has a whole lot of useful info...hope this helps.